The Car Ride Home: An Interpretive Examination of Parent-Athlete Sport Conversations

Conversations occurring within the car ride home may shed light on parental socialization among adolescent athletes, as conversations are viewed as sites to socialize participants as members of the group or family. Parent-athlete communication also occurs within a broader social context of youth sport, where narratives regarding performance and parenting may shape the ways in which parents and athletes communicate and make sense of their experiences. The purpose of this study was to explore conversations between adolescent athletes and parents during the car ride home after sport practices and competitions. Twenty-seven athletes and 1 of their parents participated in individual semistructured interviews. Thematic, structural, and performative narrative analyses (Reissman, 2008) were used to examine parent and athlete accounts of conversations during the car ride home. Results pertained to participants' experiences of enjoying versus enduring the car ride home, privacy, and narratives of performance in youth sport. Participants' stories about the car ride home normalized parental feedback as useful and necessary for performance improvement, and conversations were often reported to differ depending on who was present in the car. We identified strategies that athletes used to navigate difficult conversations, and participants provided suggestions about strategies to improve the conversation during the car ride home. The findings are discussed in relation to narratives of performance and good parenting in youth sport, and in terms of parent behaviors in public versus private settings.